“Wait… is that a stuffed toy liver?”
Yes. Yes it is. 😅
You know your husband’s a transplant survivor… when your 6-year-old packs a stuffed toy liver when you’re urgently departing from East Africa for home due to your husband’s medical crisis. 😭
Meet Oliver—yes, O-liver 🙄—our squishy little reminder of grace, grit, and the miracle that Cliff is still here.
We bought Oliver at the World Transplant Games in Perth, where Cliff competed in the triathlon event and won 4th place two years ago.
Our daughter has slept with him every night since.
These past few weeks have been a blur—
Sleepless nights. Muddy roads. Spurious lab results.
Hole-in-the-wall clinics. Ultrasounds, guesswork, and intuition-based, blind treatments. Detective-level calls across time zones.
And so many questions.
But now—Cliff is stable. 💛
We’re not in the clear yet.
More tests and a drug challenge lie ahead.
But for now—we look back and give thanks.
We count our blessings.💛✨
Some will say, “I told you so.”
But what if even this was grace in disguise?
That the crisis came just a week before our intended return? That God timed our steps, even in the unraveling?
We’re learning—
How scary it is to keep trusting,
to hold the tension between risk and faith,
between foolhardiness and obedience.
But maybe this is our deeper invitation—
to love more deeply,
to trust more wholly.
to live each day like the miracle it truly is.
So here’s to the heroes with scars,
to the little girls clutching faith.
to the doctors who didn’t give up.
And to the God who shows up—
not always in the fixing,
but in the carrying through.
